While coups do not have a single definition, researchers who study them – like ourselves – agree on the key attributes of what academics call a “coup event.”
Coup experts Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne define a coup d’etat as “an overt attempt by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting head of state using unconstitutional means.”
Essentially, three parameters are used to judge whether an insurrection is a coup event:
1) Are the perpetrators agents of the state, such as military officials or rogue governmental officials?
2) Is the target of the insurrection the chief executive of the government?
3) Do the plotters use illegal and unconstitutional methods to seize executive power?
A successful coup occurred in Egypt on 3 July 2013, when army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi forcefully removed the country’s unpopular president, Mohamed Morsi. Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, had recently overseen the writing of a new…